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I feel that it will definitively tell us where the team is at.

Slightly off topic but had to come on for a vent.. this league is just proving how dead in the ass it is and how the league clearly is against fans and active support.. There were a group of kids. Yes that's right kids probably 6-8 years of age throwing red, white and blue balloons around near the active. Security just came in and told them to stop. Took the balloons and popped them all whist the other 2 security guards stood there laughing. I swear there is an agenda to completely kill this league off. It has been dead for a few seasons now but seeing this tonight just made me go wow.. what has this league come too?? When they should be encouraging fans to come, especially kids to games and you get in trouble for having a couple of fucking balloons.. I went to my first ever NBL game a few weeks ago.. it was loud.. they were handing out hand clappers and continually encouraging the whole crowd to make noise and in particular when the other team had the ball. The atmosphere was incredible and it made me look around going "wow the NBL knows how to put on a show" meanwhile the league is on it's knees, has security guards litteraly patrolling all areas and if you dare let out a fart you'll be kicked out.. end of my rant but I'm just getting fed up to be honest!

Two incidents in my life does not give me great optimism: me selling car radios (as a hi-fi enthusiast) and hearing "I don't care what it sounds like, as long as it looks good" & second being at a professional wine tasting (as a budding alcoholic) and me getting a bollocking from another drunk after tipping a disgusting wine down the sink which was also the most expensive wine on the night only to find out a few minutes later that the wine was so poor that the marketing guy recommended to get a designer label and charge like a wounded bull so that most people thought that the price meant it was good. I feel the same way about people who watch European football, they get told that it is the best and how expensive it really is so they assume that it must be good. But have an in-depth talk about football tactics, team cohesion, what each player brings to the team and sports psychology and watch them run away.

Yes, I quite liked Ugarkovic playing full back. He's solid there and it frees up space in midfield for more creative options.

Why was this guy signed? He's been average at best. He's taken Ugarkovic position and our managers, with all their badges, pushed Urgakovic forward in a position that isn't his. Urgakovic has had some of his worst moments as he's stuffed a number of front third scoring opportunities. Simply because it isn't his natural position. Get rid of Jeggo, hes useless. Happy to keep Urgakovic even as a bench player if we can find someone better to replace him.

Also, if Nisbet misses match time for whatever reason, he can play against the kids at half time to get his fitness or form back

I always have. Sometimes I watch European games and wonder why we consider our product to be so inferior. Sure the top four are several notches above the rest, but the rest are not that impressive.

Interesting. Certainly we're inconsistent but neither Brisbane nor WSW are weak sides, Brisbane latterly but not so much at the time we beat them. And we beat Wellington only a few weeks ago. We're just plain inconsistent. Capable of being good one week and bloody useless by comparison only days later.

8 year deal coming up surely

Well said. Players and staff should be assessed on performance, not reputation. As they say in golf - "You're only as good as your next shot." And I think if we don't excise the cancer, players such as Caputo and Arslan will move on as well because staying here is not helping them in what is a short career. And staff will move on as well. As they already have. IMO people denying the situation that exists in the club are burying their heads in the sand. I still cannot get any information from the club on our FRG....

Hopefully CFG learns from this season that you cannot eviscerate a squad and then expect results, regardless of who you bring in. We should always be in a rebuilding/strengthening phase. Not good enough to have been caught out by roster issues ...

For the sake of next season not making the finals is a blessing. Don't want anything to paper over the cracks of this season.

Best coach in the league vidmar that’s why his at city we only take the best lol

Have officially reported to the club via membership@. Suggest anyone else who saw it does the same.

Game Day Caputo to score a hattrick and Antonis to score from inside his own 18 yard box.

Will Talbot and Beach be back. I'd probably prefer Ugarkovic to remain at full back and Lecks in midfield than have Talbot back doing his usual

quite a few outcomes, and that's not even taking into account that we could still finish higher than 6th. sad that we have been so fucking inconsistent and injury prone all season. then again, the three big wins we have had this season has really skewed our GD. take the 7-0, 8-1 and 8-0 out we have played 22 games for 6 wins with 25 Goals Scored and 36 Goals Against. makes think we will win this and then lose to Western Utd

How can we have equaled the highest winning margin in leauge history multiple times, then break the record and still not be sure if we're even going to make the top 6?! Ffs this club!

I like this new formation, eg Urgarkovic at right back, and Leckie joining Arslan in the midfield.

HT: 5 - 0. I don't want to put the mozz on us; I know that it's early, but even with our regular last 10 minutes of the game, snooze... we are likely to get a point from this game.

Yep second this... We don't deserve to make the top 6.

Wonder whether there's a "club room" where Members would be welcomed, meet each other, meet players and staff, watch videos, get a coffee, even have a meal, etc.? Of course, Heart did that in the early days - the Westpac Meeting Room was it? - fans could go up there after a home match and meet the lads. It's on one of the early threads here. Very common, at least with smaller clubs, elsewhere - and of course at NPL level in Australia with the long-established clubs. My home town club still does it, even though we lost our old home ground years ago, and there's still a Supporters' Bar and welcome for visiting supporters, and the website even gives them details on local bus services to and from the ground and the latest time they should catch a train from London to make kick-off time. They really work hard to get spectators to the match. To our knowledge, does any other A-League club do this? With City, "fan engagement" just does not seem to be on the agenda.

Always there when I can. And I'm aiming to be at this one and the WU match in two weeks. Then start planning for next season.

We're not suggesting that City should lie. Merely that the club is short on meaningful information to members, and has been lacking in this respect for some while now. Always asking people to buy something, or enter a competition, or register for something, but not treating us like adults capable of interest and understanding, or, let it be said, of actually contributing meaningful opinion and ideas.

I’ll take Joel Matip. Free agent end of season, wrong side of 30, centre back and currently nursing an ACL injury he suffered this year.

Let's be honest guys.. our season was over weeks ago.. Surely Vidmar has to go! He can't stay on after this shit season!

0-2, 2 jeggo own goals

Not a penalty in a million years. Fernandez barged over. Just a joke.

Heading off to this one with my son as for a change he hasn't got a shift. Win this and it will tell us where we are at, hopefully 5th if Sydney lose against Mariners and Mac beat WSW both good chances of happening. After a couple of weeks, will Vidmar play Caputo from the start or revert to Jmac? Will Reis an Soup partner as CBs or will he bring back Good? Are any of our injuries back yet? Some interesting questions here

I'm looking forward to next season and some personnel changes, a frustrating game to watch, even though overall there's improvement, there's zero cohesion at all. Football has been under attack in this country and certainly in Vic for the last 100 years. I mean it was a point of discussion in Vic parliament at one stage, because it threatened to be bigger than AFL.

Saw this. Security were utter arseholes. And the rest of them laughing while it happened. Those kids might not come again. It's these fuckwits who are killing the game. Adult that was with the kids was I think filming it all on his phone. Hopefully results in a complaint and a few sackings.

This would be the most 'us' outcome

Sunday football who's going?

You are allowed to disagree of course. I just find us way too hot and cold. Today as an example. We belt the weak teams then lose against teams we should be able to beat. Whole season has been frustrating at best!

Because, more often than not, we run into teams that can defend

Great win - bottom of table team. Would be happy with a 1-0 win for the last two games. Jakolis still cannot score or shoot on target... Jeggo - cannot see what is adding to the team , poor...

Feels strange to Google 'biggest a-league winning margin' 3 times so far this season and we're still 7th.

I disagree sorry, well for now anyway. Definitely don't deserve to be anywhere near the top 4, but we've already beaten the team we're fighting for 6th 7-0. Our expectations aside, can't say WSW deserve that last final spot before us. Will change my mind if they beat us next game though.

i'm not sure there is an easy, quick to fix answer here. to highlight this, i'll start with our three "big" name attackers going into this season (MaClaren, Leckie and Nabbout). they were all signed to three year deals (from my understanding via the pinned current squad thread) when they were 27, 30 and 28 respectively (as signed in June - Sept 2021). MaClaren was a Socceroo with little injury issues (or at least at the time from memory). Leckie has been a star at a WC in the time since despite injury issues while Nabbout was a decent age. also remember this also includes two league premierships in that time where those players have featured prominantly (even with Leckie and Nabbout being injured at times). so i don't think the 3 year deals those players signed is all that bad. three current defenders that were signed at the same time in mid 2021 was Good (3 year deal at age 28), Nuno Reis (3 year deal aged 30) and Galloway (aged 24 with a 4 year). given that defenders tend to play better to an older age, i'd argue those deals have actually been fairly reasonable given the players in question and the success we have had over the last two seasons. the other risk i foresee here the the Richie Garcia dilemma. you can offer shorter term deals (Garcia only had a one season deal given injury history) with the risk the player comes really good and then fucks off to a bigger deal. so you're dammed if you do when Garcia leaves and you are dammed if you don't (ie Leckie) when the injuries get the better of them on a longer deal. and that doesnt even take into the Richard van der Venne / Thomas Lam fuck around. you do your research, sign a quality player to a decent deal and get the goods during season one only for them to fuck off home sick. you can probably add Sahki to that - was finally coming good so we buy out his deal only for some sort of bullshit to occur within two weeks later. secondly, (and i've said something elsewhere that) having a mass change over with a loss in culture and a head coach whose too laid back (didnt or couldnt set a high standard / level of responsibility) makes it hard to keep players accountable. the club should have taken that into account with how we set up going into the season. if Rado needed a couple of proper hard nose pricks on his coaching staff then that's what should have happened. edit: sorry for the long response; again no easy fix

Every club anywhere in the world will hire players that don't work out for one reason or another. Ageing players are also an issue everywhere. The problem gets highlighted in the A-League because of the squad cap size which is a feature rather than a bug. Hence any club should only have two players that don't quite fit in. We have too many.

Hats off to big Max there. Great work with the assist

Nah, he clearly got the ball. It should have been a 1 look and play on situation, I have no idea why they needed 5 different angles. The ref was the one we had in the 1st game against Perth, he sent off Talbot and then it got VAR checked and he had 4 VAR interventions in about 15 minutes. He is average

I notice the balloon incident was discussed in the Talking City game summary as one of their three talking points. I hope this one isn't going away without an almighty fuss.

Awesome win this arvo to secure the premiers plate. A week rest now before finals.

There goes our finals chance, and, really, we don't deserve it. That game really encapsulates our season: sterile possession; struggled to break down deep sitting organised defences. We are still to play our first choice starting XI this season, so injuries have also been a factor. The most important off-season task is to find a good Le Patron-level coach for next season

Yes, your summary checks out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Goodwin IIRC Heart fans were equally surprised that he didn't sign for us after his successful debut in the A-League. Just looking at Papas' career it may be that Papas was instrumental to Goodwin going there. He's "one that got away." There have been others, but it seems inevitable under our system. Probably at all clubs if we looked closely enough.

As far as I know and am concerned FRG doesn't exist.

Arthur Papas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Papas Although it's not mentioned here, he was for a short time Heart Youth team coach (or assistant), after coaching Oakleigh and before he joined Newcastle in 2011. He was definitely there at Northcote (with Aloisi?) one time when I was watching our youth team and the likes of Jeremy and Zac Walker.

Another shameful waste of taxpayers' money... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-20/commonwealth-games-victoria-cancelled-cost-revealed-report/103608858